


Poppies

by actuallyfeanor



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Going Overboard With Symbolism, Implied Sexual Content, Tumblr: Writing-prompt-s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 04:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17842301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actuallyfeanor/pseuds/actuallyfeanor
Summary: Tumblr Writing Prompt: "In an alternate world, love is deadly. Literally. Loving someone or something drains away your life force. The more you love, the shorter your life."Here is my take on that





	Poppies

_We are the Dead. Short days ago_  
_We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow_  
_Loved and were loved, and now we lie_  
_In Flanders fields._  
\- John McCrae: ["In Flanders Fields"](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/flanders-fields)

We kept our distance. Get too close, and you die. Harsh words protected us against an even harsher death. It was a lonely life, all these years of solitude in the crowd; surrounded by others, ever alone.

I barely knew my mother. I have been told she started fading the day I was born. A few weeks past my fourth birthday, her thin, skeletal frame could no longer withstand the decay that had seeped into her body, into her bones. She slipped out of my life and into her death as easily as one walks from one room into another.

I worked. It was a desk job in accounting, it paid the bills, it made me moderately happy. I liked seeing the numbers on the page, tracking the flow of money as it changed, morphed from one form into another. I have an eye for detail, for finding the errors. They stand out like red poppies in a field of wheat.

Like your scarf. It was a red poppy in a field of grey, an error in the smooth flow of everyday life. You wore a red scarf with your grey trench coat, and you looked like everything I ever wanted and everything I ever wished to be. You smiled to me, with that blood-red poppy of death and decay, and I could no longer keep my distance. I was a child, seeing fire for the first time and wanting to touch it, to run my hands through the shimmering golden flames of your hair.

You were reading on the tram, and later, when we drank coffee and talked about mathematics, you gave me the book you had just finished, said I should read it, especially the numbers you had written on the title page. _I think you’ll find they add up quite nicely._

And they added up when I called, two days later. We met again, in fire and a flurry of golden flame-hair, too hot to touch. And though shadows waited in the wings, though we were fading at every touch, every kiss, I could not have cared less. We were merging, going out in a blaze of glory, leaving the ground and soaring to a higher existence.

I think of my childhood now, of my mother, and I see the kindness and warmth in her eyes, mirrored in your eyes when you look at me, and in mine when I look at you. I have learned that there are things worth dying for. Here is one.


End file.
